Flotsam & Jetsam: Detritus of a Cluttered Mind
by Anguis
Summary: Drabbles and ficlets. Ch. 7: It - "It's hard and fast on his kitchen table . . . ."
1. Insatiable

Here's where I'm depositing any little LOCI drabble or ficlet that isn't really big enough to be out on its own.  


* * *

**Title:** Insatiable  
**Prompt:** Goren/Eames, sandwich (Porn Battle VII)  


* * *

"Hey, you gonna eat that?"

"Bobby! How can you think about food right now?"

"What? I'm hungry."

"So am I, but it's not for a leftover roast beef sandwich."

"_You're_ the one who wanted to, uh, . . . in the kitchen."

"Only because _you_ looked like you weren't going to make it to the bedroom."

"Well, how could you expect me to when you were . . . doing _that_? Anyway, what are you hungry for? I could fix you some-- Oh!"

. . . .

"You meant a, a . . . metaphorical hunger, not, uh, gastronomic. Shit, you're insatia-- Mmmm . . . yeah, do that again!"

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

"Eames!"

. . . .

"Got any mustard for that sandwich?"


	2. Rhizomes

**Title:** Rhizomes and Other Things That Grow Underground  
**Prompt:** ginger (ci_fans_unite drabble challenge)  
**Summary:** She listens, too, and actions have always spoken louder than words.

* * *

"I know. I'm sorry. It really is just a side effect of the chemo, not . . . _that_." Bobby spoke in a rough whisper into the phone tucked against his shoulder, his fingers digging into the ridges of his brow. "If the Zofran and Compazine aren't helping, I just don't . . . I don't know." He sighed. "Look, I gotta go. No, really I do. It's not--" Even across two desks' widths, Alex could hear the screech and the click. "I, I . . . love you."

The next morning, a fragrant bag lay atop his untidy stack of half-finished reports. The tag read, "Crystallized ginger--for nausea."


	3. Of Life and Robert Goren

**Title:** Of Life and Robert Goren  
**ci_fans_unite** **prompt:** 250-word character sketch  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Word count:** 273 (What can I say? I"m an overachiever.)  
**Author's Note:** "To swallow one's barrel" means to commit suicide by shooting oneself (putting the gun in the mouth).

* * *

Life sucked. There was no way to get around it. It was a lesson learned early and often by some, and Robert Goren had been a most assiduous student. Indeed, anyone who'd had half an ear for gossip these past few years would nod and agree that he would be the last person they'd blame for swallowing his barrel.

Life was a bitch, but to some more than others, and it had been suggested by more than a few people (both overtly and indirectly, with varying shades of anger and concern, and in various degrees of sanity) that it would be better for everyone if he made his exit sooner rather than later. He always listened, always considered (couldn't help it, really, because even the ramblings of a madwoman were shot through with fraying threads of truth), and, indeed, the evidence seemed to be mounting up in their favor.

And yet . . .

And yet, the wind still stung his nose in the winter, he still could toss his head back and bare his teeth in laughter at his partner's dry remarks, and, after wandering endless streets to stave off nightmares that would eventually come true, the new dawn gilding the Empire State Building and tenements alike still dampened his stubble-shadowed cheeks with the incontrovertible proof that his heart was not yet beyond repair.

Life had ambushed him, worked him over with bare fists and brass knuckles, stripped him, and left him for dead, but he'd never take the bleak oblivion of a bullet in trade for even one fiercely alive winter day, one golden sunrise, or one more chance to grin at Eames' jokes.


	4. Decline and Fall

**Title:** Decline and Fall  
**Character: **Bobby  
**Prompt:** fall (**lawandorder100**)

* * *

He didn't dare let his mind fall silent, because in every nook and cranny lurked a memory waiting with a still, small voice to remind him of everything he was losing. Lunatic, librarian, a story before bed if he was quiet while _they_ lurked outside the door, demanding harridan, pathetic child, a cool hand on a feverish forehead, a stinging slap across the face for no reason other than that he was there, and a desperate grasping at his coat when he had to go--all part and parcel of 'mother,' and all fading faster than the funeral flowers he'd soon have to buy.


	5. Irresistible

**Title:** Irresistible  
**Rating:** PG  
**Prompt:** X-files Episode Titles (**lawandorder100**)  


* * *

There were some people who awakened sexily tousled and endearingly sleepy. Alex Eames was not one of them. She looked more like death warmed over--skin waxen and pale, hair matted in clumps, a frog in her throat and a foul taste in her mouth, drool drying in a sticky trail down her cheek, and sleep crusting her eyelashes together (and it had been Bobby--one of _those_ people--who had languidly slanted open one eye, wiped out of the corners of her eyes with a gentle thumb, and informed her in his seductively rough early morning voice that the gunk's official dictionary name was, indeed, 'sleep').


	6. She's Not His Irene Adler

**Title:** She's Not His Irene Adler  
_A gift for Squarey in the Law & Order Secret Santa exchange._  
**Characters:** Goren, Nicole Wallace  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Author's Note:** The first quote is from 6.01 Blind Spot, the rest from 5.01 Grow.

* * *

She's not his archenemy or his nemesis or anything so removed as that. She's his alter ego, his "could've gone either way" (and maybe both ways are more closely entwined than he could ever admit without taking refuge in a bottle or a line of white powder).

So when he says, "A normal life is not for you," or "You are not safe to be around. Too much damage has been done," or "If you want to save yourself, you have to face up to who you are," he's not trying to snare a dangerous criminal or rescue an innocent little girl. He's speaking to his reflection in the mirror and hoping against hope that one of them will listen.


	7. It

**Title:** It  
_A gift for Squarey in the Law & Order Secret Santa exchange._  
**Characters:** Goren, Eames  
**Rating:** PG-13

* * *

It's hard and fast on his kitchen table with the uneven leg pounding a breakneck jig on the floor.

It's slow and tender in the 3am darkness when everyone else awake is either drunk or crying or both, and her hair keeps tickling his nose as it swings in time with their gentle rocking.

It's forgetting _what_ he is and knowing _who_ he is, and she's always been his only sure thing.

It's his hand snugged into the crook of her arm and her fingers stretching up to brush his cheek and the persistent thud of her heart against his sternum.

It's all in his head.


End file.
